Josh

King's talent for writing everyday life of a small town and populating it with interesting characters is on full display here. Granted there are times he goes into the small details that may not appeal to everyone, but for me as a non-visual reader he paints a picture that even I can see.

The atmosphere he builds while slowly increasing the tension is a great journey, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There were some elements I didn't think were particularly strong such as the romance Ben has and I thought there were a tad too many ‘random' characters. Overall though it's a great “modern” take on the vampire mythos.

Quite an enjoyable book although not always the easiest to read. It can be violent, bleak, and quite dark at times although not without purpose. I wanted to point out something I appreciated from the start though, so on a bit of a tangent!

I was hooked to this book almost immediately and the reason for this is how it displays mandatory training. It reminds me a lot of basic training. Exaggerated and embellished of course, but if someone had told me Hurley had been in the military I wouldn't have batted an eye. What do I mean? Small things, for example, the mantra's about killing they yell out during bayonet training are very similar to some of the same things you will say in boot camp. The Drill Sergeant will yell things like “What makes the grass grow green” the response of course “blood, blood, bright red blood”. “Who are we?” “The Quick.” “Who are they?” “The dead”. The dead being figurative here as this was actually before Iraq or Afghanistan, but I digress. 

She even writes about that burning desire to be praised and recognized by the very people yelling at you and making you do push up's. There's enough element of truth to what Dietz is saying and experiencing during said training, that I instantly understand and have an immediate connection with the character.

Moving on though, overall I quite enjoyed the journey. I like the theme's it brings up about war, power, governance, and the power of the people. None of this is new and you can find many stories like this out there, but not every book needs to re-invent the wheel. Sometimes it's enough to add something to existing theme's and execute on it well and that's what we have here.

My biggest complaints I suppose is outside Dietz I don't have any attachments to any characters. Some people die...it's war obviously...but I don't really feel much outside of how it effects Dietz, because I don't ever feel like they're really that important. The other complaint and the main one is that the ending is kind of...well for lack of the better word lame. I would certainly have liked something a bit different in that regard, but while cliche, sometimes it is true that it's the journey and not the destination. Last bit will be in a spoiler even though not integral to the story it's something I certainly missed.

When I was reading this book I thought Dietz was male. It's never stated that they were male, they have relationships with both sexes through the story, so it begs the question why I thought that. Could write a paper on that likely, but I appreciate that the book caused that kind of reflection without it feeling unnatural or shoehorned in.

I have two major pet peeves in storytelling: instant love and telling instead of showing. Unfortunately, this book contains both, though the latter in a different form than I’m used to. To avoid spoilers, I'll use an analogy.

Imagine I tell you a story about a child who trains for years to become a master swordsman. I assure you that his training is complete, that he’s now skilled enough to compete with warriors who have spent a lifetime honing their craft. But when the moment comes to prove himself, his skill is never truly shown. He fumbles, he falters, yet I still insist he is a master. Despite never demonstrating his abilities, he somehow goes on to defeat the greatest swordsman of his time.

That’s what reading this book often feels like. The prose is strong, the plot itself is engaging, and I loved the ending, but the overall execution leaves much to be desired.

For a little context, I rated the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy very highly overall. I did this despite having complaints that I mentioned in the reviews about the characterization, the casual sexism, and the info dumps. But I still loved the series, because there are few Science Fiction authors better than Liu Cixin at taking a hypothetical or theoretical principal, inserting it into a fictional setting and building a world out of the things that aren't solvable today or that are dreamed up today.

In that trilogy the plot was so incredibly compelling and the atmosphere of fear and this heavy blanket of bleakness...I ate it up. So even though I have a lot of complaints, I gave the books a 3, 4, and 5 as I became more and more invested in this first contact story with it's incredibly interesting Scientific and imaginative idea's.

This review isn't about the trilogy, but it highlights how something very flawed can still be loved immensely. That is not the case for Ball Lightning. The same complaints exist for me (which given this was written before the trilogy isn't surprising), but the things I enjoyed in said trilogy are gone as well. There's a plot line, but not one that is very interesting,  get the same flat characters in both characterization and dialogue, even more info dumps (some points feel like a textbook), the great atmosphere from the trilogy is gone and hell there's not even an antagonist to root for or against. To me it is very much a book where the hard science fiction was given precedence over the story and the story suffers for it.

I don't like reviews to be all negative though. So what I will say is had never heard of the phenomenon Ball Lightning. So because of this book I had a fascinating time researching more about that. So I did at least get something from the novel.

It's a good conclusion to the trilogy, albeit not completely satisfying. I really enjoyed the twists and in hindsight, it made a lot of things make sense that I was unsure of before. I think there are a few small things that don't add up with said twists and some pacing issues especially in the first half, but overall I enjoyed how it played out.

I say not completely satisfying, not to indicate anything negative per se, but because I really wanted to see one character in particular get what I felt should have been coming to them, but alas it wasn't meant to be.